


Lemon & Ginger

by kaistrex (weishen)



Series: Prompts [19]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive Hale Family, Alternate Universe, Beacon Hills (Teen Wolf), Derek stares a lot, Full Shift Werewolves, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Mates, Meet-Cute, Nice Peter Hale, Oblivious Derek, Scents & Smells, Stiles moves to Beacon Hills, Stiles uses magic in his teas, Tea, Werewolf Derek, Werewolf Mates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-10
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-17 00:00:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29340957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weishen/pseuds/kaistrex
Summary: “Is—Is he my—” The word dies in his throat.“How did you notknow?” Laura screeches and Derek feels his hackles rise, defensive.“Wha—Bu—But he smells good to everyone!”“Notthatgood,” Cora scoffs.“Yeah, not good enough to hump him over it.”“I didn’thump—”“You kinda did,” Stiles agrees, scratching at the back of his head. “Though I can’t say I minded.”-A new tea shop has opened in Beacon Hills, and Laura drags Derek along so he can try the incredible, memory-evoking drinks for himself. He’s soon going back for more, but is it because of the tea, or the owner?
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Series: Prompts [19]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/523144
Comments: 75
Kudos: 817





	Lemon & Ginger

**Author's Note:**

> I drink a lot of tea. It's a surprise a fic like this didn't come out of me long before now!

“This place is _incredible_ ,” Laura gushes as she drags Derek along the blustery December street in downtown Beacon Hills. “I can’t believe you haven’t been yet.”

“It only opened last week,” Derek says flatly. “And anyway, I’m not a tea person.”

“You will be after this. Seriously, this place smells _so good._ Makes the owner smell good too.”

Derek isn’t convinced, but he follows his sister a little further down the street to the tea shop, the front window offering a view of warm wooden decor and leafy green potted plants. ‘sTEAlinski’s’ the shop sign says in laser cut wood, sans serif font on a plain white background.

The bell jingles as Laura opens the door and Derek is battered by a cacophony of scents before he even sets foot inside. There’s ginger and vanilla and lemon peel and rose and cinnamon and peach and licorice and different dried flowers he can’t even place – and that’s just scraping the surface. He’s so scrambled that he doesn’t catch something Laura murmurs to him over her shoulder, unable to make sense of the words.

She heads straight to the counter, smiling at the guy standing behind it wiping his hands off on a towel, brown hair and pale skin, wearing a blue and green flannel shirt over a white tee.

“Hi, Stiles.”

“Hey, Laura. Good to see you again.” 

“This is my brother, Derek.”

Stiles looks him up and down, pink mouth spreading wide in a grin. “Ah, so this is Mr. Grumblepants.”

Derek whips his head round to glare at his sister. “ _Laura._ ” Why the hell did she have to give such a cute guy who’s new to town such a bad first impression of him?

“Living up to his name,” Stiles laughs. His smile is playful, eyes sparkling, and Derek’s frown melts away as he stares. Stiles licks his lips and Derek gulps. “What can I get you today?”

“Surprise us," Laura decides, eagerly. 

“I’ve got a few new Christmas blends if you wanna give one of those a whirl?”

“Sounds good,” Laura says as Derek wrinkles his nose, and Stiles doesn’t miss it.

“Not a fan of Christmas?”

“Not really." He grudgingly elaborates at Stiles' politely raised eyebrows. "It starts too early and the same five Christmas songs play on repeat non-stop wherever you go and then you have to struggle to think up presents to get everyone. I’d rather just curl up as a—” He glances at Laura, correcting himself. “Under a blanket until it’s over.”

“You must have enjoyed it when you were a kid, though?”

Derek scratches at the stubble on his jaw, casting his mind back. “I guess.”

Stiles studies him for a moment more, and then comes an enigmatic smile, spinning round to tinker with the jars of loose-leaf tea and ingredients behind him.

“Come on, let’s take a seat,” Laura says, tugging Derek by the elbow.

About ten minutes later, Stiles carries two earthenware mugs over to their table by the window, setting them down in front of them before retreating back behind the counter in a potent waft of ginger and lemon peel.

The tea looks paler than black teas Derek has seen before, like soft amber, or whiskey, or amber whiskey eyes sneaking glances at him from behind the counter, shining in the overhead lights.

“Try it,” Laura encourages, and Derek tears his gaze away from a soft-looking mouth and a scattered trail of moles back to the mug in front of him.

He inhales the steam slowly, picking out ginger and cinnamon and cloves, and maybe a far-off hint of caramel. Lifting it to his lips, he blows on the surface and takes a careful sip.

Immediately, he's transported. Visits to Lake Tahoe in their wolf skins, tumbling back inside the family cabin they used to own with a chill on his cheeks to a glass of hot spiced apple juice spreading warmth down to his toes. Christmas morning back home, the adults’ glasses of mulled wine, sneaking a taste, the tang on his tongue. Gingerbread on Christmas Eve, decorative red, white, and green frosting, squirting a tube of it in Peter’s face when he tries to sneak a cookie from the counter.

“Incredible, isn’t it?”

Derek stares down into the depths of his mug, trying to remember how to speak. “Yeah.” There are tears in his eyes, but he doesn’t feel too self-conscious; Laura looks exactly the same as he feels.

He glances around at the other patrons, a girl in the corner smiling longingly down into her mug and an elderly man sitting along the opposite wall passing a hand over his eyes. It seems the memories this tea evokes isn’t down to superior werewolf senses.

Laura beams at him and Derek smiles back.

It ends up being the best Christmas he’s had since he was a kid. He catalogues everything, every moment and smell and feeling, the joy of having everyone together, really taking the time to appreciate how lucky he is. He smiles into his pillow when the pack kids thunder up and down the hallway at 3AM screaming that it’s Christmas, smiles as Carrie, Laura’s youngest, screeches a tantrum from her highchair non-stop during dinner, and even wears the hideous knitted Christmas jumper complete with angry-eyebrowed wolf that Laura jams over his head without complaint.

He doesn't dislike Christmas, not really. The commercialism is what gets in the way during the lead up, but this. This is what's important. 

He becomes a frequent customer of the tea shop after that, the cascade of scents every time he opens the door becoming a comfort for him that he didn't even realise he was missing. Now, it's like he can't be without it.

The view isn't too bad either, he thinks, casting a look at Stiles working intently behind the counter. Being a werewolf with a mate somewhere out there waiting for him makes considering anyone else a waste of everyone's time, but that doesn’t mean Derek isn’t allowed to look. And if his fantasies take on a few more moles and bright eyes and a clever tongue, well, who’s going to know?

He accompanies Laura on every one of her visits, and tags along with Cora whenever he finds out she’s going to drop by. It seems they enjoy all the natural scents just as much as he does.

On a solo visit to the shop mid-January, Stiles brings him a steaming mug of green tea swirling with the scents of delicate rose petal and warming clove. The taste, though, conjures long winter nights stargazing, smoky campfires, breath curling in chill dark air during a late walk through the preserve, a barely-there blush of approaching spring. It feels like he’s been cocooned in a fluffy blanket.

“Hug in a mug,” Stiles says, and Derek stares up at him, mind hazy. Curling up as a wolf sounds pretty good right about now, maybe with his head in Stiles’ lap with those long fingers scritching at his neck. Stiles chuckles and claps him on the shoulder, heading back behind the counter. Derek really hopes he didn’t say any of that out loud.

Another time, it’s black tea with cocoa shells and orange peel. Mugs of hot cocoa before bed back when Grandma Hale was still with them, peeling clementines with her claws, a knitted patchwork blanket now kept on the back of the sofa in the lounge. It's the anniversary tomorrow. Stiles leaves him to sit alone in the back corner with that mug, and he’s grateful for the privacy.

"Thanks," Derek says to him quietly when it comes time to leave. Stiles gives him a small smile and a nod like he understands.

The tea shop becomes a little haven for him, so much so that he thinks he'd be content to sit in there even without a mug of tea just to breathe it in, but that's hardly something he can confess to Stiles, trying to run a business.

That's the way it stays for almost another month, until Derek encounters him somewhere unexpected.

A car is rumbling up the driveway of the pack house where Derek is sitting at the kitchen counter while his mom and two sisters bake a cake with Amanda, Laura’s oldest. She’s grinning a gap-toothed smile at Derek around a mouthful of batter and he pokes his tongue out at her as his mom wipes off her hands and heads to the door.

“A personal delivery? Why, Stiles, I’m honoured,” comes his mother’s voice from the front of the house, a little teasing but genuine, and Derek leaps to his feet.

He hovers in the front doorway, his sisters pushing by to skip down the steps, followed by Amanda who barrels past him to scream hello at ‘the tea man’.

Stiles is standing beside a beat up, light blue Jeep, Derek’s mom with a generous bag of loose-leaf tea in her hands. He's rubbing at the back of his neck, seeming a little embarrassed, glancing up at Derek and away.

“I thought it was about time I came to introduce myself properly.”

“You just smell like tea,” Amanda tells him, tugging on his pant leg.

“Not just tea,” comes out of Derek’s mouth right as the thought crosses his mind. He hadn’t meant to speak it out loud. He’s edged closer, now at the top of the porch steps.

“What else?” Cora asks, leaning right into Stiles’ personal space to sniff, and Derek tries to give her a warning frown. What’s the human going to think about all these strange people sniffing him? But Laura joins in.

“Yeah, what else?”

He casts a look at his mom, but she just quirks an eyebrow at him expectantly so he descends the front steps and gets closer to try and make it less weird that he can smell every thread of scent radiating from Stiles even with fifteen feet between them.

Stiles for some reason doesn’t look startled by all of the sniffing, but he does look curious to hear what Derek might say.

Derek swallows. “Just—Like—Fresh lemon. And ginger. And—” It’s heady, being this close to him, getting harder to open his eyes after every blink. “Cinnamon and—” His mind is going fuzzy, and Stiles is tilting his head back, exposing his neck, and Derek is burying his face there, going limp, huffing in deep lungfuls, wrapping him in his arms to get closer, giving in to the itch of his fangs—

A hand cups the back of his neck. Not Stiles. Too strong. Feminine.

He growls a warning to whoever’s daring to touch him right now, whoever thinks they can get this close to him and his—

“Derek, honey, you need to put your fangs away.”

It’s his mother, his mother’s hand, his Alpha, and her voice sweeps away some of the fog, enough that he remembers that the person bundled up in his arms doesn’t know about werewolves and here Derek is licking at a mouthful of fangs pressed against his neck.

He leaps back, snapping his fangs away but too late does he realise his eyes are still glowing gold.

“Hey, big guy, calm down.” Stiles’ cheeks are pink and his heartbeat is like the flutter of wings, but he’s not scared. He’s holding out his hands towards him and smiling, like he’s pleased, soft ginger, and Derek doesn’t know what’s happening.

It’s only then that he realises his sisters are laughing. They’re leaning against each other like they need the support to stay upright, Laura slapping at Cora’s arm, absolutely beside herself.

“You’re— _such_ —an _idiot_ ,” Cora is choking out as Laura cackles harder, tears rolling down both their cheeks.

Derek looks to his mom, bewildered. Amanda is dancing around them in circles chanting, “Uncle Derek’s an idiot!” but he’d bet his entire life’s savings that she doesn’t know what’s going on either.

“Derek?” his mom prompts, the corners of her mouth trying not to lift like even she wants to laugh about this. “Is there something you want to tell us?”

He thinks of Laura stuck to Paul like a starfish at every opportunity for at least the first year of their relationship, of Uncle Peter growling at anyone who gets close to Leanne on a full moon, of his mom sweeping her cheek over his dad’s throat whenever they pass each other in the house. He swallows hard.

“Is—Is he my—” The word dies in his throat.

“How did you not _know?_ ” Laura screeches and Derek feels his hackles rise, defensive.

“Wha—Bu—But he smells good to everyone!”

“Not _that_ good,” Cora scoffs.

“Yeah, not good enough to hump him over it.”

“I didn’t _hump_ —”

“You kinda did,” Stiles agrees, scratching at the back of his head. “Though I can’t say I minded.”

Derek stares.

“What’s a hump?” Amanda asks, and Laura claps a hand over her daughter’s mouth, setting Cora off laughing again and this time Stiles joins in.

Derek is still too busy staring to laugh. He just had a mouthful of fangs and glowing gold eyes, so why is it that Stiles isn’t currently running for the hills? The realisation hits him a lot slower than it should have.

“Wait, you—you know about werewolves?”

“‘ _You know about werewolves?!_ ’” Cora parrots in a poor and, frankly, offensive imitation of his voice. “Oh, my _God,_ Derek!” she yells. “He’s a goddamn spark!”

Derek splutters and throws his arms up. “Well, no one told me!”

“ _I_ told you!” Laura corrects him. “When we stepped into the shop for the first time!” She cocks her head in realisation. “You weren’t listening, were you?”

Derek shakes his head, dumbly. He’d been distracted by the powerful scents overwhelming him, of the teas and explosion of ingredients and his _mate_. Derek stares at Stiles, at eyes like the depths of a teacup. A spark. His mate. Stiles’ lips twitch with an impish smile, his eyes flashing violet. Derek feels his own flash gold in return, unbidden.

“Huh,” Stiles says, and does it again. Once again, Derek’s eyes flicker. Stiles’ gaze darkens with a smirk of total mischief. “We’ll be having some fun with that when we’re mated.”

Derek’s entire body jolts like he’s been tied into a knot. That Derek doesn’t need to tiptoe around the complication of revealing his true nature, that Stiles is so receptive to life with a werewolf, that he’s already thinking about the mating bond, the mating bite, the mating _sex_ —

“ _Derek. Fangs,_ ” his mom warns.

Stiles tilts his head back again, baring that long expanse of pale skin.

Derek whines like it’s been punched out of him, and this time, he can’t argue that hump Stiles is exactly what he tries to do.

*

“You’re an embarrassment, nephew,” Peter says to him later when Stiles has been invited in for – of course – a mug of tea and Derek’s sisters have filled him in on every humiliating detail. “And you call yourself a wolf.”

Derek is too busy rubbing his cheek against Stiles’ neck and rumbling in his chest to argue.

**Author's Note:**

> Stiles definitely fell head over heels for Derek as soon as he saw him but knew Derek was a werewolf and was ABSOLUTELY GUTTED that he obviously wasn't his mate.  
> lol oh, Derek...
> 
> I made a photoset thingy [here](https://kaistrex.tumblr.com/post/642769836216385536/lemon-ginger-by-kaistrex-isis-he-my-the) if you want to see it. I'd really appreciate it if you shared it if you enjoyed the fic ^-^
> 
> Maybe subscribe or check out my other works if you're interested, or you can find me [here](https://kaistrex.tumblr.com/) on tumblr or at my fic rec blog [Underappreciated Sterek](https://underappreciatedsterek.tumblr.com/).
> 
> Thanks for reading~


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